The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott (6 page)

The girls laughed and walked together toward the water. Margaret had confided in Anna earlier that morning that she was smitten with Samuel Parker and believed he returned her favor. Louisa could see now from his wistful gaze in Margaret’s direction that he was indeed a man in love. In a rare moment of courage the previous Sunday, Samuel had suggested the swimming party when Margaret told him that the Alcotts were in Walpole for the summer. As they stood on the lawn beneath the arched windows of the Unitarian church, the pale pink and yellow panes glinting in the morning sun, he had suddenly grown shy. Margaret tried to put him at ease by suggesting whom he might invite and how they might send around the invitations. Samuel seemed only too happy to oblige her wishes. She had told Anna that though he wouldn’t admit it, welcoming the Alcott sisters was for him the perfect pretense for a gathering he could be sure Margaret would attend.

She had then further divulged that at a party the previous fall, after Samuel drank three glasses of champagne punch, he’d told Margaret, haltingly, that her blond curls reminded him of corn silk at a husking bee. Or, rather, that corn silk reminded him of Margaret’s curls, since he had touched the slick fibers many times but could only dream of touching her hair. Anna had giggled and rolled her eyes, but Margaret nearly went into a swoon as she relived the encounter. Louisa just shook her head, amazed at the nonsense to which young women her age seemed devoted.

Once the tent was fixed securely between the trees, Samuel and Nicholas waved the girls over. Inside, the swimmers could change from their Saturday clothes into proper swimming attire, which for the boys meant wool tunics with short sleeves and wool breeches that stopped below the knee, and for the girls a heavy flannel dress with pantalettes beneath, swimming boots, and a cap for their hair. All the girls but Louisa emerged from the tent one by one, shapeless, bobbing along like bald old men toward the water.

Louisa peeked out of the tent to see the group gathered on the water’s edge, splashing in the warm current and pointing out a red deer that eyed them from the opposite bank. She crept out and folded her dress into a neat square, then rested it atop her boots, which she placed in the modest line the other girls’ boots formed. Their laces were cinched into bows, as if leaving them untied signified less than total commitment to matters of propriety. She’d been unsure just what to do about her feet. She had only one pair of boots, and it had taken her all morning to help Anna fashion something
she
could wear in the water, a pair of slippers their father had abandoned, which the girls cut down with a kitchen knife and sewed into rough shape, the laces jutting in irregular zigzag down the front. Anna had refused to go to the party at all until Louisa convinced her that no one would be looking at her feet.

Since their conversation on the bench at the edge of town, Anna had grown demure, reticent. She was thinking now about impressions, taking note of the names of important families in town, particularly the ones with sons. Louisa had no choice but to leave her own feet bare. She didn’t care at all whether the others thought the Alcotts were poor—they probably knew it anyway, since why else would they drag themselves to Walpole for the summer, unless it was to live as another family’s charge? But Louisa knew it mattered to Anna.

Better to be called brazen than destitute, she thought, forsaking her bathing cap. She pulled the long steel comb out of her coiled hair, shaking the dark waves free until they hung to her waist, skimming the gray flannel belt of the swimming costume Margaret had lent her. At times like these, Louisa felt quite proud of her ability to rise above the frivolous material trappings of feminine existence. She did not have dresses with lace bodices or bonnets decorated with velvet ribbon; she did not own jewels or cashmere shawls. It simply was not possible in their current circumstances to attire all four girls as well as most young women would have liked. But Louisa knew she had something far more luxurious within reach: a thick stack of paper and ink in the well. In the quiet of the evening she could hold the blotched sheets in her hands and marvel that she had once again captured and set down in words the thoughts and images that careened through her mind. There was something deliciously permanent about those sentences on the page. The world could take an awful lot from her, but it couldn’t take those words. As long as she had her ink, her paper, she told herself, she was content with her lot and yearned for nothing.

She stalked to the river, her shoulders back, her head held high. The other girls stood in the river, the water lapping at their waists. The echoing chatter halted as she approached, and Nora, a few tangerine curls poking out along the edge of her swim cap, stared at first Louisa’s hair and then down to her bare feet, white and cold, like two stones. Nora pointed a slender finger; the skin on her hands was nearly translucent. “Your feet—” she began.

“It’s simply too warm—I just couldn’t
bear
to put on my swimming boots,” Louisa replied, too loudly. She forced herself to slow her pace, though she longed to rush into the water before anyone else looked too closely at her feet. Anna watched as Louisa’s thick hair floated away from her torso where it met the surface of the water, then Anna closed her eyes, willing her mortification down deep in her chest, away from her face where everyone would see it.

A girl with fine black hair like moss and round toad eyes gasped. “Aren’t you going to turn up your hair?” she asked in a superior tone. There was one in every group, Louisa reflected, who relished rules and the chance to police those who dare to defy them. It seemed this one had generously volunteered for that task.

Louisa shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t mind if it gets wet. I’m Louisa, by the way.” This time she didn’t offer a handshake.

“I know. I’m Harriet Palmer,” the girl said, eyeing Louisa like she might be daft. Harriet stood with her shoulders hunched severely forward, her back curved like a lady’s fan. Louisa tried to conjure some compassion for the unfortunate girl but felt only irritation.

An uncomfortable silence fermented as the others looked away and tried to gather the fragments of their interrupted conversations. A sharp whistle came from the top of the hill and they all turned to look.

“Ho, swimmers!”

Joseph Singer waved his arm above his head, descending the hill on his heels, a paper sack wedged between his elbow and ribs. Louisa felt her chest tighten and was glad for the river’s cold swell against her torso, glad to turn and face the opposite bank long enough to arrange her face in bemused calm. Turning back she saw Anna’s eyebrows climb and a social smile unfold.

Margaret’s cheeks were full of color. She whispered to Anna and Louisa as Joseph made his way to the water. “That’s Joseph Singer. His father owns the dry goods store on Washington—”

“Yes,” Anna cut her off. “He is very charming. We met him last week on our errands. Remember, Louisa? ”

“Of course I remember,” Louisa replied. “He seemed like quite the dullard to me.” She felt instinctive dislike for Joseph as she heard her sister praise him, but she hadn’t intended to speak quite so loudly. Joseph stood shaking hands with Nicholas, but his face whipped in the direction of her voice. When he saw Louisa, he broke into a wide grin and waved.

Anna and Margaret whispered in unison: “Louisa!” Nora and Harriet moved closer and the five girls stood in a cluster, their hands undulating in the river’s miniature whirlpools.

Margaret rolled her eyes and continued softly. “The Singers are one of the oldest families in this town. But people are saying the father—”

Splash
. Louisa tucked her feet beneath her and plunged her head into the river’s murky surface, feeling her scalp tingle as the water spread through her hair. She didn’t want to hear Margaret’s gossip, didn’t want to watch her sister prudently cataloging details about Joseph’s suitability as a prospective match. Louisa’s own impressions were enough for her. He was skinny and smug, and anyone who married him would have to suffer his company for years to come.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” Joseph called to them with a wave. “What a lovely painting you’d make, perched there in the sunshine.”

Margaret stopped talking immediately and preened while the other girls giggled, then Nora began chattering about a harvest party her parents were planning. Louisa, standing apart from them, ignored Joseph’s attempts at charm and watched a turtle climbing onto the opposite bank.

Joseph joined the other boys a little way down the bank. Louisa peered furtively at him as he walked slowly into the current, his eyes closed against the bright light reflecting off the water. He stopped when the water reached his waist and spread his palms across its surface. Nicholas and Sam stood behind him setting up their fishing poles. Much as Joseph irritated her, Louisa perceived that something made him different from his friends, who fumbled with their tackle boxes and argued the merits of earthworms over grubs. Joseph seemed to be somewhere apart, absorbing the river’s stillness, taking it inside himself.

It was rude and strange to stare and Louisa looked away. She decided it was an opportune moment to exit the water without attracting too much attention and climbed to the bank, sheets of water cascading off the layers of fabric in her swimming costume. She gathered her long hair out to the side of her body, twisting it like a rope to wring out the water, and walked over to where her dry clothes lay folded next to her sister’s to fish her comb out of her boot and refasten her chignon. But her hair was too heavy to arrange now, wet up to her ears—if she tried it would give her a headache. She decided to let it dry a little in the sun. She chose a flat rock and sank wearily onto it, her body becoming aware of the fatigue that comes from fighting to stand still in a swift current. She closed her eyes, the late summer heat on her cheeks, and nosed the scent of syrupy mud lumpy with buried frogs, the verdant, mossy side of tree trunks untouched by the sun. This was the smell of
outside
, the smell of endless re-creation, the only place, her father and Mr. Emerson would say, where man can seek to transcend the confines of body and rational mind.

“Hungry?” A cheerful voice pried its way into her reverie.

Louisa opened one eye and squinted. Joseph stood barefoot in the grass, a fragrant pear proffered in his hand. She blinked at him a few times and glanced over at the bank. His fishing rod was lodged between two rocks, bobbing gently with the current.

“Oh,” she blurted, struggling to steer her focus back into the present. Seeing him took her by surprise and her thoughts scattered. “Thank you, but that’s all right. We brought our own lunch.” She gestured to the basket containing hard rolls, deviled eggs, and cake made with the preserves Mr. Emerson had brought for Abba. Louisa noticed the icing had melted and smeared against the newsprint wrapping, and she fumbled with it, trying to tuck the cake under the rolls and out of the sun. Her hands felt clumsy—she realized she was nervous.

“Well, would you like to join me? I’m famished.”

She grimaced—imperceptibly, she hoped—and nodded. “Just let me call my sister.”

He nodded. “Of course. The more the merrier.”

“Nan!” Louisa called out to the covey of girls now perched on the bank, their hems still floating in the water. Nicholas had gone over to them and sat on the bank with his legs outstretched, leaning back on his palms. When Anna saw Louisa and Joseph waving her over, she moved toward the bank. Nicholas offered her his hand and helped pull her to her feet. Louisa felt the ache of conflicting emotions. Once Anna became enmeshed in the world of courting, dances, dressing the part, Louisa felt she’d lose her sister forever. But she knew Anna wasn’t happy in the family home, waiting for her life to begin, dreaming of what it was to be in love.

Anna joined them on the rocks, her dress now dry from the waist up, and tucked her strangely fashioned slippers beneath her heavy skirt.

“Mr. Singer has invited us to eat with him.” Louisa affected a strained smile. She wondered whether Anna fancied Joseph, whether she should try to prod the two of them toward conversation.

Joseph chortled at her formal tone. “Please,” he said. “Call me Joseph. Mr. Singer is my father.”

“And how is he, your father?” Anna practiced compassion like an art form. She knew how to apply it with a delicate hand, knew its gradations and nuances, could distinguish its authentic form from imposters like sympathy and voyeurism. It came naturally to her, almost a physical impulse. Louisa had always admired this ability. She felt in comparison like some kind of lumbering boar, unwieldy, slow, low to the ground. She wasn’t any better with others’ emotions than she was with her own and often felt a thrashing within her she struggled to contain. But Anna was serene.

Joseph smiled gratefully. “How kind of you to ask. He has recovered a great deal in the last few days, is up out of bed, and came to the table for dinner yesterday noon.” His lips tightened slightly, a somber quality deepening his voice. “We fear, though, that he’ll never fully recover. His lungs were quite weakened with last year’s bout of pneumonia. He seems to get ill more frequently. I’ve taken over most of the work at the store.”

“I’m sure he is grateful to have such a dutiful son,” Anna said, breaking her square of lemon cake in two and handing him a piece. “Did you tell us that you don’t have any brothers?”

Joseph shook his head, fixing a steady gaze on Anna’s eyes, her lashes turned down as she brushed crumbs from her lap. Louisa took note of it and felt the twin pangs of vicarious excitement and jealousy, to her dismay.

“I have one sister, Catherine. She is not yet fifteen and most of the time seems even younger than that. I wonder why it is that the expectations are so different for the youngest child in the family.” He was thinking aloud and, once he realized what he had said, looked embarrassed at his frankness.